Pentagon Probe Finds Many Failures Led to Fatal Niger Ambush, Suggests No Action

An investigation by the US Defense Department into an ambush in Niger last October in which four US soldiers were killed has discovered a number of failures at different levels of command.

Its verdict? Eh, no biggie.

The military investigation found “individual, organisational and institutional failures” that led to the ambush and the deaths of four US soldiers, according to a report by the Guardian.

A joint US-Nigerien military unit, which included 30 Nigeriens and 12 Americans, was on a mission to capture and kill a local ISIS in the Greater Sahara (ISIS-GS) leader. According to the investigation, during their mission, the soldiers, moving in unarmored civilian SUVs, entered a village called Tongo Tongo to replenish their water and talk to local leaders. As soon as they left the village, they were ambushed by a much larger group of militants and were eventually forced to abandon their vehicles and run for their lives on foot.

According to the investigation, the Nigerien and US soldiers had not received the basic training that would have allowed them to communicate with each other in spite of the language barrier. This despite the fact that the US soldiers were Green Berets, members of the US Army’s elite Special Forces.

“If you get to a situation when you’re under enemy contact, you need to be able to operate like clockwork without having to speak… and in this particular case, the team did not conduct those basic soldier-level skills,”…